“A month ago there was a similar false narrative pushed by Germany’s Bild, I think,” said the publicist, who specializes in Russian foreign policy and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
🧵📑UKRAINE COULD BUILD NUCLEAR BOMB WITHIN MONTHS IF TRUMP CUTS OFF MILITARY AID – report
The Kiev regime could build a nuclear bomb in a matter of months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, The Times reported, citing a briefing paper prepared by researchers for… pic.twitter.com/TkXjUvHzyj
"They can theoretically create something like this because they have radioactive waste at nuclear power plants. And they can somehow attach a TNT charge to it," Poletaev noted. But if talking about a Fat Man-type of bomb, then “absolutely not," he stressed.
"Ukraine is completely incapable of creating an industry for the production of weapons-grade plutonium, or a closed technology for the production of nuclear weapons in general," Poletaev underscored.
“They did it for a reason, because control over the spread of nuclear weapons around the world is in the interests of all nuclear powers – and the US first and foremost, and Russia as well. Nothing has changed since then. I don't know what would have to happen for the US to allow Ukraine to start developing nuclear weapons,” Poletaev said.
At an Organization for Security Co-Operation in Europe conference in December 1994, Russia, the US, the UK, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances – a set of treaties providing security guarantees to the latter three countries on their accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).